


Gone, Hunted

by storywriter8



Series: Wizards and Werewolves and Wind Oh My! [24]
Category: Leverage
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Magic, Canon-Typical Violence, Episode Related, Episode Tag, Episode: s03e07 The Gone Fishin' Job, Gross White Men doing Gross White Men Crimes, I don't know what to tag that as, Not Beta Read, Protective Eliot Spencer, Psychic Nate, Scene Rewrite, Shifter Eliot, Werewolf Eliot Spencer, Wind Elemental Parker, Wizard Hardison
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-15
Updated: 2021-01-15
Packaged: 2021-03-12 19:55:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28765935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/storywriter8/pseuds/storywriter8
Summary: Eliot is forced to use a power he swore never to use again to keep Hardison safe in a forest full of anti-government, trigger happy, hillbillies.
Series: Wizards and Werewolves and Wind Oh My! [24]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1157621
Comments: 5
Kudos: 31





	Gone, Hunted

Eliot’s eyes slowly roved the militia camp, ignoring the smell of fear rolling off Hardison and picking up the faint scents of fertilizer, molasses, gunpowder and unwashed humans. His attention snapped back to sour faced ‘soldier’ in front of them as he stepped forward to punch Hardison in the gut. Resisting the urge to snarl, Eliot let his instinct and training rise up and take him over. If they were going to make it out of this alive, they would need a real soldier.

“Turner Creek minutemen. Anti-government militia, huh?” he said, emotion falling from his tone as he stared down the man in front of them.

The soldier in charge did a good job of masking his unease, puffing out his chest proudly. “Anti-government freedom fighters. They say the war is coming, tax man, but it's already begun. What do you call a man who takes your property, enriches your adversaries, and deprives you of your liberty?”

“Your enemy,” Eliot said, pouring every last ounce of cold malaise he still carried deep in his heart into the two words.

Unnerved, the commander stepped back before remembering all the soldiers surrounding him and regaining his smug expression, “consider yourselves casualties of war.”

Eliot gritted his teeth and prepared to shift. His wrist would break under the bite of the metal cuff binding him to Hardison, but force the thing open, freeing him. Hopefully a huge wolf in the middle of their camp would distract the soldiers long enough for Hardison to escape.

“Whoa! Hey! Hey! Hold up! Hold up, man! C-c-can I at least get a-a cigarette?” Hardison stammered, startling both the man with the gun pointed at them and Eliot into staring at him.

“What?” The commander asked, bewildered for a moment.

“C-can I get a cigarette? As an enemy combatant, I'm entitled to one last cigarette according to Geneva Convention article 89, paragraph 3, subsection k.” Hardison rambled, waving his hand in emphasis.

Eliot eyed the hacker, noting the light in his eyes that always denoted some kind of plan. Letting out a breath, and forcing back his instincts that insisted he only trust himself, Eliot glared around and played along. “Are we combatants or not?”

The soldier nervously complied and Eliot fought to keep himself from smiling as Hardison grumbled about the type of cigarette he was being offered and how long it was taking the youngest soldier to light it. But as the commander shook his head and the soldier with his gun trained on him leaned just a bit too far forward, Eliot leapt. Wrenching the gun out of the man’s hands and slamming it into the side of his head, Eliot dragged Hardison to his feet, and away from the young soldier the wizard had knocked out with a blast of electricity, and ran as bullets zipped past them.

The pair bickered viciously as they ran headlong through the woods, only stopping when Hardison tripped and fell to the forest floor panting.

Taking pity on the hacker, Eliot paused to tilt his head, sniffing the air and listening to the distant sound of barking. 

“I got us out of the camp, you get us out of these woods,” Hardison panted, dragging himself back to his feet to push onward only to be pulled back by the cuff binding him to Eliot.

“Shut up,” Eliot hissed, gritting his teeth and slowly letting his power rise up. He hadn’t tried this particular level of shift in years, and despite his rigorous self control regiment, he worried he would fall too far.

Black fur with an almost pearlescent shine rose up to cover Eliot's skin, his ears perking up and pushing his beanie off and tail trashing out of the carefully constructed hole in the back of all of Eliot’s pants. The shifter gritted his teeth as the sharpened to fangs and flexed his hands as his claws came in. His features remained vaguely human even as his ankles cracked and elongated, putting him taller than Hardison for once.

“E?” Hardison whispered, as the huge beast turned its blood red eyes to stare at him for a moment.

Turning his wolfish head back towards the sounds of their pressures, Eliot took a deep breath and let out thunderous roar. As the echoes of his howl reverberated off the trees and leaves around them, Eliot was rewarded with the sounds of yipping and panicked paws running away. With a shudder, the werewolf left his shift fall and stumbled into Hardison’s waiting arms.

“It’ll be hard for them to find us without the dogs,” Eliot gasped, fighting through the drained feeling he always got after abandoning his more powerful form.

“Eliot,” Hardison said softly, a painfilled look on his face, as if he had completely forgotten that they were running for their lives.

“The van was averaging 45 miles an hour, right? We were in there for 22 minutes. We took two turns off the highway. That's 17 miles north of town. We need to go south.” Eliot snapped, pulling out of Hardison’s grip and dragging him back into a run by the handcuffs.

“How did you know to do that?” Hardison insisted on asking, though he didn’t fight being forced to run again.

“I've done this before ok,” Eliot snapped, crushing a trail through the underbrush before backtracking and taking them through a small clearing, pulling Hardison away from breaking any branches.

“This, right here? I-in the woods, handcuffed to a man?” Hardison gasped, unbelieving.

“Yes, I have, okay? It was easier last time, though.,” Eliot growled, regretting his words as Hardison immediately demanded to know how.

“Because the other guy was already dead,” the shifter snarled, his hard tone finally causing the hacker to stop asking questions he wouldn’t enjoy knowing the answer too. 

Eliot was very nearly too busy shoving down the dark memories of his past that he missed the nearby soldier’s scent. Silently cursing, he dragged Hardison back against a tree but it was too late.

Hardison swallowed hard as he listened to the crunch of twigs under the boots of someone walking straight towards them. Turning his head to mouth a panicked question to Eliot, Hardison nearly leapt in shock to find the hitter had completely vanished. No, not completely, he could still see the small length of chain pulled taught in the air but where it should have connected to the cuff around Eliot's wrist, Hardison could only see a faint disturbance in the air. 

All other thoughts were banished from the hacker’s brain at the faint click of a gun’s safety and the dark chuckle behind him.

“Alright don't move, put your hands up, where’d the other guy go?” the leering soldier said with a grin.

Hardison felt his cuffed hand jerk forward as something slammed into the side of the soldier’s face, throwing him to the ground as his gun was yanked from his hands. 

Eliot reappeared, hurriedly shaking himself out of that same shift Hardison had seen a little while ago, and emptied the gun. “Tell your little Boy Scout troop their time’s up.”

The man gave them a bloody grin and shook his head. “We get new recruits every day. You can't stop what we have planned. No one can.”

Giving an irritable growl, Eliot lashed out, knocking the soldier out completely before grabbing a hatch from the man’s belt.

“What did he mean by that?” Hardison asked, frowning at the unconscious man.

“Come here,” Eliot growled, tugging Hardison toward a large rock nearby, “we’re gettin’ these damn things off. I can hear a train comin’, you run that way and you’ll get to the tracks in time to catch a ride, get out and call Nate, got it?”

“Mnh-mnh, mnh-mnh, no, what was that hillbilly yelling about, Eliot?” Hardison insisted, resisting his hand being pressed to the damp stone.

“Get you out and get reinforcements,” Eliot continued, growling and tugging harder on the handcuffs tying them together. 

“Why do we need reinforcements, Eliot!” Hardison shouted, tugging harder back and wincing as the metal cut into his skin. “What aren’t you tellin’ me!?”

Giving a frustrated snarl, Eliot slammed the hatch into a nearby tree trunk. “Molasses and fertilizer,” he blurted out, continuing as the hacker made a confused noise, “You can reduce the molasses down and use it as an oil for a fertilizer bomb, all right? I've seen it in Lebanon. It's better than kerosene.”

Swallowing hard, Hardison quickly put the pieces together. “Okay, s-so a fertilizer bomb and a van. That's what the little hillbilly was crying about.”

“Look,” Eliot insisted, eyes wide as he tried to get Hardison to understand, “we get you on that train, you call the FBI-”

“And what, leave you!” Hardison shouted, reaching out and grabbing the hand he was cuffed to, “maybe the FBI gets here in time, maybe they don't, but I ain’t about to abandon you to a forest full of trigger happy rednecks!”

Eliot’s throat caught at that word, clenched at the thought that Hardison believed he would be abandoning his hitter. 

“We're gonna get bloody on this one,” Eliot said softly, unsurprised by the long steady look he got as an answer as off in the distance he heard the train passing them by.

“I say we whoop some hillbilly ass,” Hardison said, the start of a smirk lifting the corners of his mouth as he gently squeezed Eliot’s hard.

Eliot nodded, not trusting his voice and retrieved the hatchet. The flimsy chain snapped easily and Eliot rolled his shoulder, working out the stiffness from dragging Hardison along, and then fell back into his shift.

It was getting easier the more he did it, an old skill he had finally picked back up, however reluctantly. With a soft sigh, Eliot called up the magic of his unnatural creation.

Hardison gave an impressed whistle as the iridescent shimmer of Eliot’s fur rippled and then faded away, blending the werewolf into the forest behind him. 

“I didn’t know shifters could do that,” he said, carefully reaching out until his fingers rested against the soft invisible fur. 

“They can't,” Eliot grunted, turning away from the hacker and stalking toward the unconscious soldier.

Knocking out soldiers until Hardison was captured and dragged back to their camp with Eliot following silently behind, was far from the best plan they had ever had. But it was the hacker’s idea so Eliot wasn’t going to call bullshit until after they found out if it was stupid or not.

“Where’s your friend?” growled the commander as Hardison was dragged before him.

“Where you puttin’ the van Chester?” Hardison asked instead, “An office building? A preschool? A church?”

“A soldier knows there are casualties in every war,” Chester sniffed haughtily.

He gasped a moment later as his head was dragged back, sharp claws digging into the column of his throat. 

“See, that's the difference between a real soldier and this little Halloween outfit you got going on,” Eliot murmured into the commander's ear as he reappeared behind Chester in all his inhuman glory. “You'd kill to protect your rights. A real soldier? He'd die protecting somebody else's.”

Fearful shouts echoed through the camp as every gun was turned to point at the black furred werewolf.

“Don't shoot!” Chester shouted in a panicked voice, unaware of the monstrosity behind him.

“You know, I never did get that cigarette,” Hardison casually commented, even as no one paid him mind, and slipped his hands into his pockets.

“I tell you, man. I think I know where your cigarette's at,” Eliot responded, just as casually, tilting his head towards the militia’s homemade bomb. “I think I saw it right over there.”

Chester's eyes grew huge as he spotted the faint curl of smoke rising up off of the explosive just before it blew, throwing everyone to the ground.

Eliot groaned and shook his furry head, his highly sensitive ears ringing from the concussive wave. “You all right?” He called hoarsely as he saw Hardison push himself off the ground.

The hacker stumbled a bit as he hurried to Eliot’s side and held out his hand, “Hell yeah baby. High five, for morale!”

Slapping his hand into the hacker’s, Eliot grinned as he allowed himself to be dragged to his feet; then cursed as he spotted a huge yellow hummer pull into the clearing. Dragging Hardison by the hand, the pair ducked behind a fallen long and watched their original mark climb out of the hummer and hurry to Chester's side.

“There you are,” hissed a voice as Nate suddenly appeared beside them, crouching to remain out of sight, “the next time I psychically steal you a train, get on the damn thing! What the hell were you thinking?”

Hardison and Eliot exchanged bemused looks as Nate snatched the radio Eliot had stolen and closed the trap around their marks.

Watching Chester and Whitman getting shoved into FBI cars was nearly as satisfying as the terrified looks their underlings gave Eliot when they spotted him standing off to the side of the Turner Creek bank’s parking lot

Then he sighed loudly.

“What?” Hardison asked, giving the pouting hitter an incredulous look.

“I never got to go fishin’!” Eliot whined bitterly.

Snorting loudly, Hardison shoved the hitter towards Nate's car. “Come on man, I got something better.”

A fishing video game was not better. Not in Eliot’s opinion, frowning as Hardison caught yet another fish while he struggled with the controls.

“It’s just not the same,” he muttered sadly, letting the controller slump into his lap.

“Eat your sandwich,” Hardison said, waving toward the hitter’s abandoned lunch, “and while you're at it, explain to me how you can turn invisible.”

“You can turn invisible?” Parker shrieked from where she had been watching the fishing tournament from the rafters. She leapt down, only just slowly her descent with a gust of wind so that Eliot gave a soft grunt as she landed on him instead of crushing him entirely.

“You should have see it, babe,” Hardison said, waving his hand dreamily, “he gets all furry and shimmery, sexy as hell.”

Snorting loudly, Eliot slowly stood up, taking Parker with him and punctuating his words with his movement. “Get used to disappointment.”

Dropping the wind spirit into his chair, Eliot snatched up his fish sandwich and quickly retreated, ignoring the hacker’s praises continuing from behind him. If only the younger man knew the blood that form of Eliot’s had seen. 

It didn’t matter that no one had died that day, it was only a matter of time before blood stained the werewolf's dark fur once again.

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea what I'm doing. But I think it was long this time...


End file.
